Tag Archives: download

It was another blog post that inspired this one. That post provided advice and instruction to protect yourself against hackers – How to protect yourself against hackers (or at least make it difficult for them). The author assures us that, if someone really wants to access your information, they will find a way to get it. But there are steps you can take to make it more difficult for the hackers and, following those suggestions, you might just keep your data protected.

The same can be said about pirating your digital content. That is, if someone really wants your content, they will probably find a way to get it. But there are steps you can take to protect your content from theft, unauthorized use, and illegal distribution.

DRM (Digital Rights Management) can be an effective tool to protect content from piracy when distributing electronically (via download). Copy-protection of CD or DVD discs is another deterrent to theft of digital content. You can also protect content when distributing on USB Flash drives, or “thumb” drives as they are often called.

Will using these strategies guarantee your content cannot be used in unintended ways? No. But you will have made it much more difficult for someone to use it in unauthorized or illegal forms and these protection strategies are effective for almost all content.

Let’s examine it objectively. Unless you have developed a hacker-proof operating system or you have the next film in the Star Wars franchise, hackers and pirates aren’t likely to spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to steal your content. Most digital content publishers serve a particular and limited audience which means the effort/reward level is not high enough to warrant extraordinary means to access or utilize the content illegally.

Is it worth it for you to protect your digital content? Ask yourself these questions:

– Does my business growth and success depend on my digital content?

– If my digital content was used regularly without the users paying for it, would it hurt my business?

– Do I want to sell more of my content?

– How important is it to collect information about who is using my content?

– Is my content among the most commonly misused? (Categories of high misuse include instructional/training videos, independent films, PDF documents, audio content, and Ebook/EPUB files.)

If you answered yes to any of these questions, it is probably worth the additional investment to protect your content. Studies have shown that protected content tends to sell more copies because “casual” sharing isn’t easy, and when that content is available in electronic forms for download, it increases sales even more while expanding the reach to a greater number of international customers.

Click here to have your digital content evaluated for the benefits of protection!